![]() ![]() Pablo Casals's bitter trip into exile in 1938 had been the harbinger of a tragic tide that would follow the next year. Christmas 1938 brought a Nationalist counter-offensive, which within a month captured the Catalan capital, Barcelona, and on February 18, 1939, carried the Generalísimo's forces to the French border. Twenty thousand Republican soldiers had perished in the operation and perhaps another fifty-five thousand were wounded or captured. The last Republican hopes for a military victory that might have produced a negotiated settlement to the Spanish Civil War evaporated in November 1938, as General Franco's armies beat back a desperate Republican offensive on the Ebro River and stood poised to invade Catalonia, Casals's native province and a former bastion of the Second Republic. 1Įvents had demonstrated the wisdom of his decision. Casals had prudently chosen the former course. He had been a conspicuous champion of the Republican cause in Spain, but as one provincial capital after another succumbed to General Franco's forces in the year of the Munich Pact, the great cellist had been obliged to chose between exile or the notorious proceedings of a Nationalist military tribunal. Penned in the village of Prades, France, only a few miles from the Spanish border, it breathes the anguish of exile, the pain of shattered dreams, and a prophetic foreboding about the future.Ĭasals had moved to Prades not long after the sagging fortunes of the Spanish Republic had persuaded him in 1938 to abandon his native land and return to the relative safety of France. There is a remarkable poignancy to this document written by Pablo Casals on May 6, 1940. The Pablo Casals Festival, an annual chamber music engagement has survived him and endures still.Listen to this page Pablo Casals: A Letter Written from Exile Pablo Casals died in Puerto Rico, where his mother was from, aged 97 years old. He subsequently found his second youth and once again travelled the world as soloist and conductor. It was not until 1950 that he played in public once more, taking part in the first Bach festival - which has become the Pablo Casals Festival - organised in Prades by a group of his admirers. He refused to play in public in a country which flouted democracy and denounced all collaboration with Nazi Germany. He never stopped helping Spanish refugees who gathered on the French side of the border. Despising both the communists and the Franco supporters, Pablo was forced into exile, to Prades in Roussillon. This dazzling career (he even founded his own orchestra in Barcelona in 1920) was interrupted by the Spanish Civil War. Pablo would play 250 concerts per year, alone or in the chamber music trio Thibaud-Cortot-Casals (created in 1905), or even armed with the conductor’s baton. It was the start of an international career: the United States, South America and Europe (Berlin, Vienna, Prague, London, and St Petersburg). ![]() His career truly began in Barcelona (he was Director of the Conservatory for 19 years and the first cellist of the Opera), then continued in Paris. After his first lessons with his father, a modest organist in El Vendrell, Pablo's studies continued in Barcelona (where he went through his teachers at quite a rate, reinventing methods of playing the cello), Madrid (he was the Regent’s protégé), Brussels (he refused an offer to attend the conservatory) and Paris (with all the difficulties of bohemian life). He discovered the cello at 12 years of age, which he studied at the Municipal music school in Barcelona. Pablo learned to play the piano from the age of four and then learned violin and flute. His father was an organist and music teacher. Pablo Casals was born on 29 December 1876 in Vendrell to a family of musicians. The most perfect technique is that which is not noticed at all. ![]()
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